, [00:00:00] hey there folks. Brian Nichols here on today's episode of CX Without the bs. Uh, this one is a little bit different 'cause if you've ever cold called manage a sales dev team or wondered why your outbound just isn't hitting today, I'm joined by John Cent from Level Up leads, where we're diving into the real first step of cx.

The moment your prospect actually picks up the phone, we're gonna talk about tone, timing, and how SDRs can stop sounding like robots and start building real relationships that actually drive pipeline. Alright, let's get into it. John Carat here on CX without the bs.

John, thanks for joining the show. How you doing? Doing great. Thanks for having me on. I'm Brian.

Absolutely. I know we've been connected on LinkedIn there for, uh, for a while. I thought it was, uh, well past due the time for, uh, us to actually hop on a call together and start talking through all the cool things you're doing. And I thought, you know, let's go ahead and, and put this on the podcast because, um, I mean, I, I look at CX not just from the, the perspective [00:01:00] of customer support and and such, but you know, when, when we reach out and in the outbound motion we're talking to customers or, or prospects for the first time.

I think that's really where the customer journey begins. We had Adam Rosen here in the show from the email outreach company, uh, recently, and he was talking about that as well. So I think there's some commonalities there, but, uh, I am, I'm looking forward to this conversation. Um, do us a favor, introduce yourself here to the audience and just tell us a little bit more about Level Up leads.

Yeah, sure. So, I'm John Ian, the founder and CEO of LevelUp Leads started the company about four years ago. We're a sales development and appointment setting company. So we have a bunch of SDRs in house. We have about 40 of them right now. Clients hire us to go out, run campaigns and set up appointments for them so their sales reps have more selling opportunities.

Love it. Um, that's my old world, right? I was in sales dev. Um, I love this stuff, right? Talking about getting SDRs actually on the phone, um, doing, doing the hard work, reaching out to prospects. It's not an easy gig, man. Um, [00:02:00] definitely not. And you know, how about this? Let's, let's start here because. I don't know about you.

I've gotten cold call though many a time, and you can tell like when there's an SDR or a BDR, whatever you wanna call 'em, right? Like if you get somebody who's doing that outbound and you can just tell that they are dialing another name on a list, right? Like it, it comes through the phone and it, my, in my personal opinion, if I can hear that, you just don't want to talk to me and you're doing this to just to check a box.

I'm probably not gonna be as invested in this call or, you know, invested in hearing what you have to offer. Um, is, is that something that you are seeing when you're, you're taking SDRs and trying to get them into an outbound motion? Like, is, is that like one of the original hurdles you have to overcome?

Yeah, I mean. Look, you, you're, it's, no one likes to do this job. No one wants to do a cold calling forever, right? But there's a reason why services like ours exist because they don't wanna manage it and do it all in-house. But when it comes to actually doing it successfully, the, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of [00:03:00] things you have to look for in the SDR r, but.

What we'd like to do is give the, give the SDR scripts, but not, they don't have to follow it word for word. 'cause that's exactly what you're talking about, is like, you can kind of tell when they're reading a script, it's coming off as robotic. It's coming off as like not personal at all. So you have to have a little bit of personality in there.

I know people say smile and dial, but follow something like that. Like if you're smiling, you're having a good time, it'll resonate. Or people will be able to pick that up in the call. And you just have to understand, not everyone's going to wanna buy from you. In fact, most people aren't. If you're really looking for the, the, the three to five people out of every hundred that you talk to that are right, or you can start building up relationships.

Not everyone's going to be in a buy now mode, but you can start building those relationships, send them some information, follow up with them when they ask you to, and then you can start building, uh, a pipeline and actually close some deals later, later on, not just right now. Let's look more and, and maybe unpack a little bit more about the building [00:04:00] relationship side.

Um, 'cause I used to have SDRs who they would, I had one SDR named Tim. Uh, I love Tim, but, uh, I, he would, he would, you know, do his calls and I'd be like, Hey Tim, you know how, how's your day go? Oh, bride. Nobody wants to buy. No, nobody's buying anything. I'm like, okay, tell me more. Like, what are some of the conversations you had?

And he'd be like, oh, this guy, this guy, you know, he said, oh yeah, no, we, we, we just did budgeting. And he, he just hung up on me. And I'm like, okay. But like. That's not a no, right? That's just that that's not a right now, that that's not him rejecting you or heck, even rejecting your offer. It's just you caught him at a moment when he wasn't in a trigger event or a buying opportunity, so mm-hmm.

It's not that he's not a good person to talk to or to have in your, your, your follow-up cadences, but rather to somebody you should be saying, Hey, no worries. Let me invest this time, energy, and effort to. You know, show you that I am a, a real person and I'm re representing a real company. Build that relationship and oh, how about this?

When the time is right, right? Like, then we can have a conversation. [00:05:00] That part really gets, it gets overlooked. So tell us more about what you see for, for like SDRs when they're, when they're going through this outbound motion. Like what are some of the, the best tips or, or takeaways to actually build real, and this is the key word, authentic relationships with these, uh, these prospects that they're reaching out to.

Yeah. So one thing that comes to mind is let's just say you're in the scenario that you're talking about. They say, oh, I'm not interested now. Um, and there's ways to get around that. How about, oh hey. Yeah, cool. No, no worries. What about this? I can send you some information. You could just see you have in your back pocket so you can, you know, when your team does evaluate this.

You have some information or what about, Hey, no worries, I get, you know, now's not the right time. What about this? Can I connect with you on LinkedIn? I'm actually on your LinkedIn page right now. Can I shoot you a connect and stay connected? I post there about two to three times a week, and I'd love to just kind of maybe get some updates on what you guys are doing at your company.

That's a great way to connect. And then they're gonna start seeing you, right? They're gonna start seeing your face. [00:06:00] If they're not, then you can DM them, right? It's just another channel that you can get in touch with them. That's one that comes to mind. And, um. I think a very authentic way to connect with somebody.

Um, and plus they're gonna be looking out for it now. Right? If you're on the phone and you say, I'm gonna connect with you now, they're like, oh yeah, I remember I had that conversation with John earlier today. Oh yeah. Cool. Except. Let, let's dig a little bit more about like actually curating, um, interest and, and building these, these online personas.

Because I see a lot of SDRs out there who like, and, and tell me if this rings true to you, John, right? You see a LinkedIn connection request. You say, okay, yeah, that's looks like a okay person except, and then. 15 seconds later, Bing. Message automation you're in. Yeah. All the time, right? Like, there it is, there's that LinkedIn request, right?

And, and then there's the message. Um, and it's usually something salesy. Hey, Brian was over on your page. I noticed that you're the, you're the channel manager for level 365. We've been doing X, Y, and [00:07:00] Z worth a chat, right? I can almost guarantee that we've all seen something like that. Tell, tell the audience a little bit more about how to do effective outbound, uh, connections beyond like talking to somebody on the phone and saying, Hey, I'm gonna send over a LinkedIn request.

Like you're going through LinkedIn, you're trying to, to curate a, a list of, uh, potential folks to reach out to. Like what's the best practice there? And how do you as an SDR come through as again, that key word, authentic versus just the, the, the, the commission hungry, you know, the, the commission breath salesperson.

Well, definitely I, I would recommend the phones, but now that your question is how are you doing this, let's say on LinkedIn, there's a few different ways to go about it. Um, I said part of it would have to do with how big is your network? How, how big are you on LinkedIn already? One thing that that is helpful for people that have bigger audiences is you might have a lot of connections in common with the person you're reaching out to, and that's always a signal of accepted.

On the other end. Right? And I do the same thing. If someone sends [00:08:00] me a, a, a connection request and I have a hundred plus con, uh, common connections, almost a guarantee I'm gonna accept, right? It's just like, oh, okay, cool. We're, we're, we know a lot of the same people. If you don't, then that's where it gets a little bit more challenging.

So then you guys have to start getting creative in what you're saying. That could involve some manual effort going to their website or going to their LinkedIn page and just trying to pick something out. Remember Brian, when you and I talked a long time ago, we started talking about football a lot, right?

That's right. Maybe they, they like, maybe they like a sports team. Maybe you could throw something in there like, Hey, uh, just connecting here. Saw you're also like, whatever, the, the Cleveland Caval Cavaliers. Um, and then you could throw something out about your, your team or something about, uh, you know, a big series or maybe they won the World Series lately.

That's another, that's a, a way to connect on a personal level. The other thing is like what's your intention behind it? Are you really looking to sell them something or do you actually just want the connection? So think of it more like a demand gen, that you can be a presence there and be top of mind and it's for them to [00:09:00] see your posts.

'cause one good way to get people to accept is just say, Hey, look. Connecting not here to pitch you anything. Most people are gonna be, okay, cool. This person's not assuming they live up to their word. They're not going to be pitching me anything but just a connection. I wanna go back to the first piece you said, and that was, well, you know, phones first though, right?

And, and this is something I, I actually was talking about with, uh, with Adam when he was on the show. Now Adam's from the email outreach company, obviously they're doing outreach via email, right? Mm-hmm. Um, and, and there's a, there's a lot of value there, I think. But to your point, and, and this is, I, I can't agree more, right?

There is so much more. Oomph behind a phone call. Then there is just getting another email. And Adam, when we were talking yesterday, he was talking about, uh, actually yesterday, we were talking last time, um, he was talking about the three areas that is really difficult for email. First is, is landing in the inbox, second is getting the right copy.

And then third is getting the right list to buy, uh, the, the right list to make sure you're [00:10:00] reaching out to the right people. Number two and three, I mean. Copy, that's your scripting, right? So that's stuff that we do. Getting the right list. Yeah. I need to know who the, the buyer personas are, what verticals we're going after.

Are we going after champions, economic buyers, blah, blah, blah. Right? But the first piece, getting into their inbox, we, we spent a lot of time on that conversation talking about email, uh, inbox hygiene, um, having multiple domains going out at once because of how strict the rules have gotten with like Gmail and Outlook, for example, in, in, in the spam, uh, filters.

This is where my brain, I, I think, and you're, you're spot on, right? It, it speaks to the importance not just of doing the outreach, but doing a multi-thread outreach. Um, and, and you mentioned, again, using the phones. Let's talk about that. Like what, in your experience is the value with leveraging the, the phone calls relative to all the other mediums that are out there?

Phones are king. It, and I wish that weren't the case because it's the most [00:11:00] expensive channel for us to run, but it's what's working. So that's what we recommend to our clients. Like you're, it's, it's, we also do email. We, we do recommend that you can layer that in, but I'd be doing our, my clients a disservice if I said, oh yeah, just run email and this is gonna actually work.

Like maybe, but not to the extent that they have in their mind. Um, so cold calling, here's why. You can actually have conversations with people, and a lot of companies are still trying to figure out who's my ICP? Why, uh, how's our new product release? Uh, like what, what is important to them, what's not? And you can actually get feedback from conversations.

So let's say you're an SDR and let's say you guys just released a new product, or maybe you're targeting a new industry, or maybe you're targeting a new region. You can start getting feedback. You don't even need to get a, now obviously you want to get the, the meeting right. If they're not interested or they're using a competitor, all it takes is, Hey, by the way, um, how come you're, you're using them?

Like, [00:12:00] what makes them so good? Or you can say, Hey, we released this. Does this sound interesting to you? Like you can start getting feedback 'cause you're actually having a conversation and then you can go back and make pivots to your outreach. So that could be to the script, that could be to the targeting.

Um, that could be feedback to, in our case, our client of what's resonating, um, what's important from the actual users. So the feedback loop is just so much tighter. Whereas email, unfortunately, you probably aren't gonna get those responses. They're probably gonna get ignored. You'll, you'll get the, uh, you'll, you'll get the, the, the, the silent treatment.

I never really liked that. Uh, that's never a good thing. Not fun. Yeah, not fun at all. Um, but you're, I, I think you're, you're really hitting on something that's important to, uh, to focus on a little bit more here on John. Right? It is that, that real life feedback loop. Um, when you're on a phone call with someone, you can, you can tell.

And better understand where you're gonna fit and why versus any, any marketing doc you're gonna get. Right? Like I, and I've seen this, I've helped [00:13:00] dozens of companies go through and like redo their ICP and buyer personas and go to market strategies and, and. I, it's funny 'cause I, I have this quote, like this, this line I hear from, from folks is, we'll sit down, I'll say, who's your, you know, who's your ideal buyer?

You know, who's the champion, who's the economic buyer? And they'll go through and they'll give me their list. And then as we talk through how their solution. Help solve a problem or, you know, creates more, you know, positive experiences or, you know, positive ROI, whatever it may be. And then we start to really dig into who's getting the valuable impact from that.

I can almost hear every, every one of these, you know, whether it's a, a sales leader or a CEO to be like, oh. So this is who we should be reaching out to. Right? And, and there's almost this moment of like an epiphany. They're like, oh, I've been going after the, the wrong, you know, the, the wrong person. This entire time I've been trying to sell this big block of ice to Eskimos.

Oh, they don't need it. That's right. Okay. This, this is who I should be focusing [00:14:00] on. I should be focusing on the person in the desert who they really want a nice cold glass of water. Right? And, and there is just this, this eyeopening moment for them when they see that all that time, energy, and effort being spent going after who they thought should use their product could have been so much better.

Just actually having conversations with folks across the. Who's getting the value from their product or service. Right. Um, so I, I guess, you know, that is one thing I, I really want folks to pay attention to because going back to the, the ethos of this show customer experience, if you are trying to solve problems for your customers that are problems that they don't have, then that's not going to equal to a more positive customer experience.

'cause you become at that point, more of a just another thing. Right. I, I, I mean, right now we are in the era of ai, everything, right? Everybody has some AI tool or subscription service they're using. You're darn right that I'm paying attention to, is this tool actually helping me or is it slowing me down, or is it just white noise?

Mm-hmm. And if it's a white noise app, I'm probably gonna go ahead [00:15:00] and, and nuke it. Like I, I'm not gonna spend 20, 30 bucks a month on an app I'm not really using, or I'm not getting a lot of value from. It's not that that's not a good product, but if they're able to present that product or solution in a different way to show a different type of value, all of a sudden I'm like, oh.

Maybe there is a lot of value here that I could start to dig into. Mm-hmm. Um, like for example, I know everybody, uh, is using like those, those AI transcription apps, right? For, for work and such. Um, I didn't really have a need for that back when this first became a thing, but I definitely needed it for my podcast.

I needed to take the interviews and upload those interviews into the AI app so I could get a transcript and then put that transcript to YouTube and then have that be it SEO, uh, optimization tool. So like. If you were to come to me as a sales person from one of those companies and just be, you know, hitting hard on the, the value from a business standpoint, I'm gonna be like, dude, that's, that's great.

Just that's not me, right? Mm-hmm. But if you were to like, Hey, you know, we we're seeing a lot of [00:16:00] podcasters and, and such, or, or business owners who leverage podcasts to help grow their, their businesses, using this to help get transcriptions for SEO and then turn that transcription into a blog post, right?

All of a sudden, oh, you're speaking my language. And right there speaking my language. Talk to us, John, about the importance of understanding your prospect's language and entering into that conversation in a way that, how is, how they would normally communicate. Like what, what's the importance there and what are some of the best practices, as you've seen when maybe SDRs or BDRs have very, very, like diverse, um, personas that they're going after on a daily basis.

So when you were talking, you mentioned the, uh, like not getting feedback from from users and so on. My podcast, I've had a few, uh, product led founders on and asked them about their biggest mistakes and they said I was building thinking I knew what my pro, my, my clients wanted, but I never asked them. So I ended up [00:17:00] building things that they actually never wanted.

It was like one of some of their biggest mistakes. And so that just resonated with me when you were talking through that. But in terms of the, the messaging and, and like what is going to really hit home with, with the people you're reaching out to? Well, that may vary depending on title, right? If you're, there may be multiple influencers on this.

The decision making process. So you might want to customize that a little bit if you're reaching out to someone in finance versus technology. Some of the best ways though, is to go and look at your reviews from your customers. Maybe that's on G two or Clutch. How are they describing what you solved for them?

Another one would be is look at case studies. Uh. How did the client describe if you asked for feedback, how did they describe that in their own words? And then you could start using some of that in your outreach. That's probably one of the best ways you can resonate with, with certain, um, seniority levels and titles within a company.

But John, what if I don't have [00:18:00] any reviews on G two? What if I don't have any case studies? What do I do then? Uh, shut down your company. No. Pack it in. Good, good luck. Um, I mean, that's when you just, that's, that's just part of starting a business and getting something off the ground is you need to do that work yourself.

So that could be, maybe you have some of that already 'cause you're coming over from a different company, you know, some of this, but that's some of the discovery you're going to have to figure out whether that's you or someone in sales on the front lines, uh, actually getting this feedback. Um. Also back to the point of what we were mentioning earlier about the cool calling, well, these are actually conversations.

You can start asking these questions. Okay, you just got rejected. They said they just signed up for another year extension with their provider. Why'd you do that? How come you like them? Right? And start understanding these things. And so those are, those are certain things you can take back and, and start, uh, implementing your outreach.

What are some of the like, and, and [00:19:00] I'm gonna use the word completely avoidable. Is that a word that's, I guess that's a hyphenated word. Completely avoidable. I'll make it hyphenated. Um, completely avoidable mistakes that SDRs and BDRs make when they're, they're starting outbound. Maybe they're brand new to the industry, right?

Or maybe they're brand new to the role. Um, like what are some of those? Just like, ah, yeah, I see this all the time. Just to kind of give like a little overview of things to watch out for. Hmm. Probably the first two that come to mind is overtalk. So talking too much and not asking good enough questions to get your prospects to open up.

Right? You're not gonna be able to learn anything from the prospect and what's important to them if you're doing all the talking. So you need to get, you need to start asking questions sooner and get that, get them to open up so that based on the information they give you, you can then start building off of that.

I, I'll add one. Um, and that is not listening. Um, like I, I've seen this, it, it's, uh, it's this, this like mentality of I have my script [00:20:00] and I just gotta get through it, right? Mm-hmm. I'll, I'll give my pit, I'll give my my CTA and fingers crossed they say yes. If not, okay. Goodbye. Right? Yeah. Um, like actually being a participant in a conversation versus just being the person reading a script.

Mm-hmm. A hundred percent. I've seen SDRs. Receive a no, and they kind of keep going as if it was a yes. You're like, wait, did you not listen to what they just said? They, you can't keep going down your script if it, you know, it just didn't make any sense. You have to actually have a conversation with people.

Let, let's actually laser focus on that for a second. Like the, I said a no, did you not hear me right? Um, there is a, and, and I might be ruffling some feathers here in the, uh, the greater sales outbound world, but. I'm not a big fan of this mentality of needing to overcome objections. Um, and here's why. I, I promise there's context behind my, my craziness here, right?

Like if we put ourselves in the [00:21:00] shoes of a prospect. Truly like the empathy in the truest form of the word, right? And understand like, okay, I'm an SDR, I'm calling this prospect. They, their phone rings. Maybe they just finished using the bathroom. They just finished walking out of a meeting. They're, you know, getting ready to go on an airplane, whatever it may be.

They're like, who? Who's this number? Who's this 3 1 7 number? I'll answer it really quick. Maybe it's a customer. Hello? Oh, it's an SDR. Sales call. Okay, God. Um, I'll, I'll take it. Whatever. Oh, you know, there's, okay. He's a nice guy, but I'm just, I'm not interested right now. I'm, I'm literally, you know, this is not a good time.

He's arguing with me. He's fighting me. Right. And, and that right there, this, this objection, perspective I've heard where people, you know, you give an objection. Oh yeah. We we're, we're under contract. Well, Mr. Prospect, a lot of my customers were also under contract when we first started. Right. And we all can see how those objections usually come out.

I prefer personally to block objections. So, you know, if, [00:22:00] if you're calling a persona, let's say it's a, it's a finance, uh, chief, whatever, right? And you know that budgeting timeframes is usually the number one objection you're gonna get. And by the way, this is not my brain thinking of blocking objections.

This is my, uh, my mentor there, Victor Antonio, um, who, who's, he's been a big proponent of the idea of blocking objections. Um, so the way that that might look is, you know, hey, Mr. CFO, it's, it's Brian here from, you know, level Up leads. Hey. Reason for my call. We've been doing a lot of work with CFOs who are looking to cut costs in the, uh, the telco spend.

And, uh, you know, one of the big areas they're looking to cut is, is long-term contracts. And one of the things I usually hear is like, Hey, you know, budgeting season, it, it's not a good time. And we actually, we, we hear that, we usually enter a conversation when you'd be starting budgeting, um, versus like any that we're calling you, you know, Hey, just wanna get in your radar and see if that's something you wanna talk about.

So I've addressed the elephant in the room. You probably have an objection. It's probably not budgeting season right now. But maybe there's a conversation worth having. Um, I guess, John, do you see [00:23:00] value in that type of approach or is there something that you've been showing, uh, you know, level at Level Up leads that is more effective beyond just blocking objections or actually responding to them?

Is there something else that you, you see work? I like what you mentioned is calling it out. So if you get ahead of it and you can mention it, then they're almost like, they can't say that because you've already mentioned it and you know it. As a, as a topic. That's, that's going to be helpful in when you're working.

Like in our case we're working for many different companies now. The SDR will be focused on, on a company, but, uh, it's much easier when that's your, you're just working for one company over and over again. And you can start maybe adjusting the scripts 'cause you know, the most common objections. Um, let's see, you were mentioning earlier, uh, I'm gonna draw a blank.

Um. I am drawing a blank. I had another talking point, but anyways, forget it. Sorry. My bad. I I say a lot of things sometimes and then I say too much and I think my guests forget what they're gonna say. Um, and then I forget what I was gonna say next, but, um, [00:24:00] how about this, like, we, we talk about the importance and, and I, maybe this is we as in like the greater sales world, the importance of outbound, but I hear a lot of folks, um, they almost have this allergy John to.

A true sales motion. Like I actually called one technology advisor company. Their name will remain nameless here for this conversation. Um, but I was talking to, I forget, it was like their, I think it was their receptionist, but they were acting much more, uh, aggressive on the phone than they probably should have.

Um, and they were like, oh, well we don't, we don't give any information to people who do solicitations. Mm-hmm. And I was like. Do you have a sales team? How do they do outreach? Right? Like, do do people just show up, right? Are they just a bunch of zoo bears and they get handed stakes every single day? Are they out there hunting?

Um, and, and I don't know if it's like this old school perspective that, and it's not even old school, just like there is this perspective that cold calling, doing a true [00:25:00] sales motion is bad. Um, where did that come from? And I guess do, do you see that a lot in your industry too? Well, what's funny is that.

I've seen specific posts of people sp they, ty tend to be in it or security and they will, they will, uh, talk smack about cold calling. They can't believe it's, you know, delete their number. And then people will go to the company and look at the open job posts and it's SDRs required to cold call. And it's just funny because they don't realize that's how their own company is actually generating business and Yep.

Ultimately paying this person's paycheck. Um. Look it, I, you have to understand what's working. You have to try these different channels. You, you understand where are people living, right? It doesn't make sense to reach out to someone on LinkedIn if it's a janitor and they're not on LinkedIn or whatever.

That's an extreme example. But the point is you want to be, uh, contacting people where they're likely to be. Another one would be like plant managers at manufacturing plants. Well, they're not on LinkedIn very much, and they tend [00:26:00] to not be in front of their computer much. They're on the phones, or sorry, on the floor.

Whereas phone calls are gonna be the best, right? So you kind of have to understand and test out where are these people, uh, living and what are the best channels to get in touch with them. So you mentioned, um, you know, the job postings, right? Going and seeing like, oh, this, this org actually has SDRs and this IT director had no idea.

Right? And they're laughing at folks doing sales. Um, but like, let's talk about the value of job postings, because this is one thing I used to teach my SDRs quite a bit was if you don't know what the, the, like, the levers to pull would be for a specific persona. Go look for that type of personas, like a job posting in that world.

So that means it's like IT director or chief information officer, or telecom manager, something in that where I'm in the tech space. Right? Um, like it might be that, or maybe it's on the other side of the aisle, maybe it's someone who is, you know, a chief financial officer or a controller or. A sales dev leader, right?[00:27:00] 

And to understand like what are the KPIs, those key performance indicators that they're being measured on. And, and like when companies are posting for that, obviously that's things they're gonna be paying attention to. So what would you say is, is an effective way to take that kind of scoping and, and you know, data mining there beforehand?

Putting that into a process, um, because it is hard to do that for every one-off. Um, is it safe to start to create assumptions, create kind of rules? Like what, what, what's your, uh, your expert opinion there? You, you bring up a perfect example of trying to understand what is important to a, a specific role or department, and then you can include that in your script.

Hey, when I talk to it, directors typically the most important things or top priorities on their, their plate are X and x and y. Um, you know, how does that, how are you currently overcoming this? Or does that sound like hit hitting that on the, on the, on the head? Or is there other things, [00:28:00] uh, that are, are top priority for you?

And so like you can actually start addressing those things and it might spark a better conversation rather than getting shut down very quick. Because if you can speak their language and show that you know them and, and, uh, what are their main, main concerns, you're gonna get better conversations. Tell us more about speaking their language.

What does that look like in practice? Well, what you mentioned is, is a great, uh, a great example is if there's a job post, uh, you can pick certain things outta that. Speaking their language. I, I would go back to the customer testimonials. Um, but one, one thing that's really cool about job posts is oftentimes they'll put to certain technologies they're using, oh, we're on Google Cloud, or we use the dialer orum, or we're using whatever platform.

And so you can start, oh, okay, that's my competitor. Or, oh, yeah, we, yeah, integrate with that. And so you can start actually tying that in. Now those are one-offs, right? So it's a little bit. Harder to create an entire campaigner on that, but it is a one way to speak directly to the person and stand out. [00:29:00] That could be also a good way to stand out in an email campaign.

Hey, saw you're, you're using x, y, Z software or maybe you attended this conference. Uh, and it's one way to stand out because otherwise what's happening in a lot of emails these days is unless you like, uh, in the preview screen, unless you know exactly who that is or that company, you're likely deleting it.

Like, I can, I, I'm starting to not even look at emails now. I kind of like look at the preview, look at who the person is and yep, what the subject line is. And if, if it's not resonating or standing out, I'll just delete it. Yeah, I do that too, man. And, and like this right here, this is the, this is the, the modern world that not only sellers are in, right?

Knowing that your, your outbound is, is probably getting just either put right to spam or the mental spam filter, right? Um, but on the other side, as, as the, the buyer, they're getting hit with dozens, if not hundreds of. Types of [00:30:00] outreach every single week on multiple different channels. They might be getting hit with email, phone calls, LinkedIn, I, I mean, across the gambit, sna I still see snail mail, um, every now and then, which I'm like, good for you.

Uh, so I guess, you know, with that being said, John, like what, what's the best practice? Um, you, I know you, you liked the phone call, but like, is, is it a little bit of everything? Is it leaning into one medium over the other? What, what are your thoughts? My thoughts are you should start building inbound and outbound channels, right?

You can't outbound. So here, let me break this down for you. In outbound you can target the right, uh, the right person and the right types of companies, but you don't know the timing, right? So you're missing that. You don't know that in most cases, but in inbound you typically have the timing, but you don't know if it's the right company or the right title.

So. By combining the two, you're essentially able to check all the boxes. Hmm. I just don't think you're going to be running [00:31:00] outbound entirely and build a successful company off that. It can be part of the, the process, but it's just a lot easier if someone's already looking for your product and you show up as a, as a reputable company, and then they inquire with you.

Now there's also some benefit to doing outbound and then people might go start looking in for you. They might start looking for your reviews or they go to your website or they check out your podcast, and so there's a form of outbound that creates inbound. That's why I think doing both is very important.

So Tom Milligan, who, uh, he and I started this show together, um, back when we were both working together at Sharpen. Um, and, and Tom, he's, he's recently joined a different org. I'm obviously at a different org myself. Uh, but Tom's one of my, my favorite people in this world, and I, you know, I'm looking forward to having him back on the show as, as co-host, uh, sometimes soon.

Um, but when Tom and I were at Sharpen together, we, we were building out some, some, uh, campaigns and we took the approach together. What we were calling political signage. And the idea [00:32:00] being is, hey, you know, when you're driving down the street and it's election season, and mind you, we were having this conversation in August of 24, right?

So get ready, you're gonna see election signs everywhere. Um, you're, you're driving down the road and you see all these different signs. Vote for John Smith, vote for, you know, Gary Oldman, whoever it may be. And those signs aren't. Meant to get you to make a buying decision rate then and there, right? What they're meant to do is to keep that, that candidate's name top of mind.

So when you go to the voting booth, right, to your point now you're an inbound customer almost in that sense. Um, now it's a matter of who do I, who do I vote for? Who do I bring to the table as an option, or in this case, actually cast my, my ballot for? And it's like, oh yeah, I remember John Smith. I saw his name like a million times.

That's right. That guy. Yeah. Um. That piece is where I'm finding our marketing is really going. And I know like there's this weird like, head-to-head, but between marketing and sales, I frankly look at them as kissing [00:33:00] cousins. Like we, we need each other in this case. Um, like I, and to your point, the inbound piece here.

Being able to market yourself, but it goes away. Maybe not so much marketing as a team, but more so like a true, authentic kind of marketing where, you know, you're putting out content that's your own content or taking a unique spin, um, but just being present, right? Mm-hmm. And I see this way too often, like folks will, will only use LinkedIn to reach out directly to folks to sell something.

If I go to their page, they haven't posted in two years, and I'm like. My man. I don't, I I don't know you. I don't, I've never seen your stuff. It's not ringing a bell. But if I connect with a guy, to your point, you know, earlier when we were just kind of curating these LinkedIn, uh, requests and connections, like they might not be a buyer today, but if you are posting stuff that has value and you're consistent, so you're staying in their feed and you're staying like the political science.

Top of mind when the time comes that there is a pain point or a [00:34:00] trigger event or something that makes them go into a buying decision, guess who should be by you? Just the nature of what you're doing for your, your, your political signage. Guess who should be top of list? Mm-hmm. Should be you. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Um, so like, tell me more about like what you've seen to be some effective political signage from a Level Up leads perspective. So one thing I've seen here play out multiple times is whether I had a conversation with somebody or I was just a connection with them, to your point is it wasn't, they weren't either in the, in the shoot.

Like they weren't in the role to make the decision, or it just wasn't, the timing wasn't right. But they moved companies and then they called me right away. Yep. It was like, oh, but the, now they're like, they're in a new company. They have more authority and who they think of the, the person that was top, top of mind.

It's happened way more than you would expect. So just because you're talking to someone, they may be telling the truth, Hey, uh, this isn't a priority for us. Don't have the budget, whatever. But [00:35:00] if you're not top of mind, uh, you're never gonna even come up in conversation. Right? So, um, the other thing I'd say is some companies, literally they're trying to sell to somebody, and that decision is only made once a year or once every two years.

It's not like. I can just switch from, uh, this dialer or this email automation platform to the other one the next week, right? Or you're on a monthly subscription. These are multi-year commitments, and so the buying decision only happens ever so often. And so like that is when you really want to be more top of mind.

You're not trying to push them into making a decision, because when that decision comes, you want them reaching out to you. So there's lots of different scenarios here. Here, here. Well, John, I just looked at the time, I didn't realize we're already over the half hour mark, so shame on me. I'm keeping us late.

But, uh, let's do this as we go towards the, uh, the tail end of the conversation. Um, obviously you are, you're doing amazing things with a team over at Level Up leads. Um, you're actually helping organizations [00:36:00] start that outbound motion, uh, and start curate some pipelines. So let's do this. Uh, for folks who've been listening today, they're like, all right, this, this is John Guy.

He's got it figured out. Um, what's the best way for them to reach out, connect, um, and you know, whether it's. They're in a buying decision right now and they're looking for some help or maybe, you know, just it'd be good to have you in their back pocket down the road. What, what does that look like and what are some of the services you guys offer at LevelUp Leads?

Yes, the best way to contact us is the website, LevelUp leads.io or my LinkedIn. I'm pretty active there. John Ian. Uh, packages will vary off a channel and volume within the channel. Uh, but pricing starts at around five KA month and it's essentially plug and play, which is really cool. You don't need to.

Get into, look at that. You're on the website. You don't need to get into, uh, uh, hire a agency to help you source the SDRs. You don't need to pay for the annual subscriptions. You need to pay for training or ramp. You essentially get to hire a company that's already ready to go. Plus there's no [00:37:00] charge for onboarding.

So your month starts later the day the the campaigns are launched. There you go. Alright, well how about this, John? Um, we'll go ahead and we will leave all those links. Um, for folks that are interested in securing Level Up leads services in the show notes, also, you're big over on LinkedIn. So go ahead, give John some love over there and of course let him know you heard him over on CX without the bs.

But John, it is that time of the show where we ask the one question we walk, we ask. Every single guest. And that is John, over the past calendar year. Um, now granted, I know you, you're more in a sales dev world, so let's just kind of maybe the overarching customer journey experience, but what are, what is the, the one big piece of BS that you've been seeing in this industry?

Um, you know, across the board, it could be, again, sales related, technology related, a combination of the two. What, what are your thoughts? I'd say the biggest piece of BS right now is I SDRs. Yeah, I think there's a world for them to exist [00:38:00] and there's use cases, but as we talked on this, on this, uh, podcast is the phones are where most value and the, the best results are are happening right now.

And cold calling is illegal for AI in the United States. So really? Yeah. Can you imagine how, how many phone calls you'd be getting every day if it wasn't I, I guess I just didn't realize it was actually illegal. Yeah. So you have to opt in in order for AI to, uh, be able to talk with you. So that could be like customer sup support or, uh, you, you inquire on their website or you click an ad.

But in terms of pure cold outbound, yeah, it's illegal to cold call. No kidding. No. So how are all these organizations that are out there like getting away with that? With the ai. I mean, I don't know, they must have opted in. Maybe it was like into an email list or something in the past, or they're breaking the, the law could also be the other thing.

They're the other thing they're doing. Um, but yeah, so that's the biggest BS. And I also, I, I haven't actually tried them, tried it out [00:39:00] myself, but I haven't seen any positive feedback on LinkedIn or anyone I've talked to. It's all been, you know. Underwhelming. So, uh, that's the biggest piece of BS that I've seen in this space lately.

You know, this is interesting, John, I'll, I'll leave us with this. Um, there has been a reoccurring theme in this show when we, we asked that final question about what's the biggest, you know, piece of bs We've been doing this show now for a well over a year, and it almost always is something in regards to the either AI or automation.

Um, and, you know, that, that I think that really speaks to. How we as humans, we have this weird instinctual like, reaction to hit the easy button. Um, like we want to just like set it and forget it. The old Roco style, right? Like just, okay, you know, we got that going. Like I got my email campaign going. Just like, let that go for four years and never look at it again.

Um, you know, oh, we got ai, great AI is gonna just do the outbound for me. Like that, [00:40:00] that right there. That's interesting. Um. Automation and ai. I wonder what it is about our brains that we just wanna take that, that easy path. Is it the, the instant gratification? Is it, I don't know. What, what do I mean? Do you have any feedback to that before we, we wrap things up?

I mean, there's just so much noise out there. AI is certainly changing things and it's very useful, but there's, I think there's a lot of new products and, uh, capabilities. It's just like not everything as, as, as good as it's making it out to be or the use case isn't there. So, uh, I just think there's a lot of noise and you just have to pick and choose what, what to actually set up.

The other thing I'd say is it's a lot to manage, so you do still need a human behind it, you know, telling it what to do. So sometimes people forget that there's a management aspect to it. My grandpa used to call things that were, uh, seemingly in, in unbelievable. He called 'em PFM or Pure Effing Magic. Um, which I think a lot of folks have looked at AI as that PFM, [00:41:00] um, but the reality is it's, it's not.

Just by itself. Magic. Right? It is, it is a tool. It's a tool in the tool belt. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and yeah, you gotta be careful with the, just, you know, the, the set it and forget it. You're right. You need to have the, the people behind the scenes who actually have the know-how, uh, being able to, to make things work.

So, uh, John no, this has been a great conversation. I really, really appreciate you taking some time. Uh, any final thoughts before we, we say goodbye today? No. For having me. I'm Brian. Appreciate .

Alright folks, huge shout out to John for joining us today, dropping some serious truth on today's episode. And if you've got some value from this conversation, whether you're in CX outbound sales, or trying to get your SDR team unstuck, do me a favor, reach out to John over on LinkedIn or go ahead and check him out over@levelupleads.io.

Uh, and this is what we do here, folks on CX without the bs, no gimmicks, no fluff, just real conversations that actually move the needle. Alright, we're gonna go ahead and put a pin in today's conversation. That's it from me. [00:42:00] I'm Brian Nichols from CX without the bs. We'll see you in our next one.